I Live Inside - by Michelle Leon (Hardcover)

About the Book

A founding member of Babes in Toyland takes readers on the roller coaster ride of the rock-and-roll lifestyle and her own journey of self-discovery.

Book Synopsis

Babes in Toyland burst onto the Minneapolis music scene in the late 1980s and quickly established itself at the forefront of punk/alternative rock. The all-female trio featured a shy, seventeen-year-old Jewish teen from the suburbs on bass guitar--an instrument she had never played before joining the band.

Over the next few years, Michelle Leon lived the rock-and-roll lifestyle--playing live concerts, recording in studios, touring across the United States and Europe, and spending endless hours in stuffy vans, staying in two-star motels, and sleeping on strangers' couches in town after town. The grind and drama of life in the band gradually wore on Leon, however, and a heartbreaking tragedy led her to rethink her commitment to the band and the music scene.

Leon's sensitive, sensory prose puts readers right on stage with Babes in Toyland while also conveying the uncertainty, vulnerability, and courage needed by a girl who never felt like she fit in to somehow find her place in the world.

Review Quotes

". . .there isn't an obvious sentence in the book. Over a little more than 200 pages, Leon's short, self-contained chapters, often less than a page, are the opposite of diary entries: considered, honed, until every word has its own reason for being where it is."
Greil Marcus on Pitchfork
"An impressionistic account of tour buses, parties, backstage tension and on-stage exultation; Leon doesn't attempt an objective overview of the Babes' mission, and the book is a better read for it."
Mojo
"In a voice that is both dreamy and well crafted (Leon holds an MFA in creative writing), the ex-bassist fashions her short, nonlinear chapters in a way that is almost filmic, building scenes into a beautiful account of both her band and the formation of her identity. She doesn't shy away from the sex-and-drugs part of rock 'n' roll--or the sexism, for that matter--but her book isn't a tell-all. Befitting its title, it takes its approach from experience: The narrative moves in and out of her time with the band, recounting milestones both funny (getting a fake id) and profound (the 1992 murder of her boyfriend, indie-punk roadie Joe Cole). The effect is visceral; at its best, Leon's prose allows readers to experience the personal and ineffable--including the transcendence she experienced when playing--putting us in a special and specific time and place in American music."
Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture
"[I Live Inside] shares qualities and quality with Viv Albertine's autobiography on this side of the pond, being equally as compelling and arguably more elegantly written, deflating the clichés and myths of life in a band but coming out of the other side enriched from following a dream. "
Record Collector